Neolithic Childhood. Art in a False Present, c. 1930: Opening

Exhibition opening, Apr 12, 2018

The stock market crash and mass unemployment, political polarization, the industrialization of perception, the violence of colonialism: “c. 1930” was a time of crisis in modernity. For the artistic avantgardes in Europe, the contemporary condition also became problematic; the impositions of the present led artists to break out into an imaginary realm of the archaic and the exotic—seeking out alternative origins and points of departure for humanity. Taking its cue from texts by the extraacademic art historian Carl Einstein, the exhibition offers a panorama of numerous artworks and archival sources that propose an insight into the interaction between the visual arts, politics, philosophy, ethnology, psychology, and the natural sciences in the period between the world wars.